Uninvited Reader
Uninvited Reader
Original Text
Conflicting Desire (Victoria, BC: Ekstasis Editions, 2000): 67.
PS 8576 .074 C66 Robarts Library
1She notes in the poem she’s reading where the disembodied
2voice speaking encounters “an ugly old woman”
3just momentarily, in part of a single line, in one
4of the many long corridors and sharp turnings of the poem,
5so that she’s quickly lost to view. That’s me, she thinks,
6I’m an ugly old woman, I who sit here reading this poem
7and its ugly old woman phrase and the poet, when he stumbled
8over her splayed, swollen legs, registered her presence,
9her inheritance, her baggage of limitations – ugly, old,
10woman – but never knew, couldn’t, because who could
11know, who can stop and know her... And this reader keeps
12thinking, loving, understanding, trapped in her eye
13following the voice on and on while somewhere back in the poem
14in a blank passage an ugly old woman sits against a wall.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2004
Special Copyright
<b>This poem cannot be published anywhere without the written consent of Albert Frank Moritz or the Ekstasis Editions permissions department.</b>